The Salad Lobby team has two ingredients: the creative, path-blazing brain of Lindsay Sauvé and the marketing, digital brawn of Peter Korchnak. Lindsay is The Salad Lobby’s soul, Peter the system.

Our story

While traveling, salad became a metaphor for all things healthy. We made salad from unfamiliar ingredients in unfamiliar hostel kitchens. We searched for salad to fill the gap between croissants, empanadas, and beer. We were far from home and at times felt out of place on the road, but as long as we had salad we had balance.

Back in the US, we wanted to eat like we did while traveling, but we learned again how expensive it is to maintain a healthy diet. Ingredients that are part of a typical grocery list in other parts of the world—high quality oils, seasonal, organic produce, fresh herbs—are considered specialty products in the US and considerably more expensive. We had to develop ways to make these ingredients stretch. We found it took more diligence and effort to bring salad to the table every day.

Out of this effort, The Salad Lobby was born as a way to bring more salad to the people.

Thanks for visiting!

Now go forth, eat salad,

Lindsay & Peter The Salad Lobby Team

Lindsay’s story: Picking up the fight

My path to salad began at a very impressionable age. Barely an adult, I apprenticed in the produce section of a small health food store in Northern California. Growing muscle mass along with encyclopedic knowledge of fruits, vegetables, and spices, I rose quickly through the ranks. Along the way, I also mastered martial art skills such as breaking down pallets and avoiding detection when entering or exiting a walk-in cooler.

The daily work with produce quickly evolved to a deep love of simple food. Even as a broke student making little more than minimum wage, I would spend more than a recommended portion of my income on fresh ingredients in order to experiment cooking with odd vegetables and peak-season fruit. Food in its simplest and freshest form, I came to believe, is the healthiest choice for my body, my mind, and my world.

As I thrived on this epiphany-inducing new diet, I also recognized most Americans don’t have the same access to fresh food I had. I was discovering the ugly side of food politics:

Instead of promoting the general welfare and well-being, the system is rigged to support the bottom line of food corporations that make unhealthy food cheap and healthy food inaccessible.

Instead of providing salad bars to kids, schools across the country sold out to the junk food lobbies.

Instead of basing nutritional recommendations on scientific fact, the US government pawned its mandate to meat and dairy lobbies.

That’s where I picked up the fight. I read books and articles, even got myself a master’s degree in public health, so that I could better advocate for everyone to have fresh, healthy, and affordable food on the table.

Favorite quote

“Salad to the People!”

Peter’s story: From fuel to food

Food is fuel, I used to think. Rather than live to eat, went my motto, I ate to live. Foodies and health nuts fussing over their food’s ingredients and worrying too much about calories? What time-wasting morons, I thought. There were more important things to worry about.

Salad in Slovakia is almost an afterthought: a garnish of tomato and cucumber slices slinking to the edge of the plate to embellish the primacy of potatoes or dough or meat. ‘Eat your vegetables’ meant gobble generous portions of cabbage and inhale bowlfuls of preserves or pickled vegetables like cucumbers and beets.

This suited me just fine.

Then I met Lindsay.

By all indications, she was the food-obsessed hippie I loved to disdain: She paid a lot of attention to what she put in her body; she preferred organic; she loved to make and eat healthy food. But she also enjoyed sharing her creations with others. She made me a salad; I fell in love.

Most importantly, I learned salad can be a standalone dish that is a tasty, creative combination of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, and dressing. Like snowflakes I knew from my country by eating them straight from the sky, no two salads are the same. Healthy can be delicious; colorful food tastes better.